I built the Lil Yello OD kit months ago. Like all the other 20 or so BYOC kits I have built, I immediately plugged it in to try it out. Although it appeared to function properly ( both controls, the switch, the jack, the power input) I was unpleasantly surprised at how bright and harsh it was. Shockingly so.

Unlike most of the kits I’ve built, this is one that clones an actual pedal I used to own. The first OD I ever had was an OD-1 back in the ‘80s. In fact, it was the ONLY OD I ever had for a couple decades. My first ever board was a Boss PSM-5, Boss OD-1, Boss DS-1, Boss CE-3 and DOD FX-65 (or 75?) Flanger. I definitely don’t remember that Boss OD being shockingly bright.

In honesty, I only played humbucker guitars for almost the first decade. So maybe embedding wrong. But it just seems that this micro clone is nothing like the old pedal from way back when.

I can’t even imagine what mistake I could have possibly made in the build to allow it to seemingly function properly in every other way, but be super bright and harsh.

I can’t even imagine what mistake I could have possibly made in the build to allow it to seemingly function properly in every other way, but be super bright and harsh.

You might be surprised at just how big a change the wrong resistor or capacitor can make, particularly in an RC filter. Posting a high quality photo or two of the PCB would be a good place to start....

Actually, this is extremely common with component placement errors--more common than a single error, since you don't end up with a resistor left over. For example, on the OD2, I'll bet I've seen the 100 ohm and 100K resistors switched a dozen times or more. And for some reason, we often see similar errors with "47" resistors....470R, 4K7, 47K, 470K. Maybe because that series seems to get very heavy use in effects pedals.

If you were playing humbuckers and a marshallesque type amp back in the day, and now you're playing single coils and some brighter amp, that would probably affect your memory. The OD-1 is quite bright. It doesn't have a low pass filter immediately after the distortion op amp to bleed off some of the unwanted high frequencies and harshness. Instead it has an inverting buffer with a cap that blocks some of the high frequencies. There are simple mods you can do to it though. The section where the actual distortion happens is basically a tubescreamer, so a lot of the common TS mods can be applied to the OD-1. You can make C3 larger for more low end and a little more gain. I would probably also change R5 as well. Making R5 smaller will increase the gain, but also increase the treble(which you probably don't want), but you can balance that with C3. 2.7k/0.22uF combo is pretty popular. But it's C4 where the "tone shaping" is actually suppose to occur. C4 determines how much of the high end frequencies get blocked. Making C4 larger would cut more highs. Maybe try .033uF.

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